Bill's Blog

I wanted to do something special for Christmas Eve and to celebrate the visit of my brother. He is a hockey fan and so we rented a Sky Suite at Humo Arena for yesterday’s game. The Humo Tashkent Hockey Club hosted Yetis Pavlador in a Pro Hokei Ligasi (Kazakhstan’s top professional league) game. Humo won easily 6-2 and improved their record to 22-9 for the season. They are currently in third place but have played 2 and 4 fewer games that the teams ahead of them in the standings. They should pass Nomad Astana, the second-place team. Karaganda leads the league with 61 points compared to Humo’s 45 points.

Pavlador is an industrial city located in the northeast of Kazakhstan, near the Russian border on the banks of the Irtysh River. The club won the Pro Hokei Ligasi for three consecutive years from 2013-2015. Pavlador looked outmatched and they changed goalies on the fourth goal by Humo. Things settled down for them with the substitute and they eventually scored 2 goals, making it a 5-2 game late in the third period. Humo scored a sixth goal on an open net to finish the scoring.

It was fun to have the box but I wouldn’t do it again. It is much cheaper to just attend the game and nothing comes with the suite. They should have a meal and drinks included and lower the price a bit. There were only four boxes with people in them. They really need a Western marketing person to come in and turn these into a money-making proposition for the club. They could rent them out to businesses that would use them as perks for their employees like they do in the USA. It was a memorable way to spend Christmas Eve. After the game, we went out to for dinner at Sushi Time restaurant.

It is nice to be on our Winter Break because it gives me time to do things I usually don’t have much time for. Thursday we were caught in traffic due to the departure of the Kazakh president. Police cleared the route from his accommodations to the airport which effectively cut off half of the downtown. We are grocery shopping and we were unfortunately on the wrong side of Nukus Street. We decided to wait out the delay in Bon cafe instead of sitting in the car. They make great coffee, hot chocolate, desserts, and sandwiches. The decor makes you feel like you are in a sophisticated city. I enjoy taking time out to connect with Nadia in a cafe and we are doing this more now that our children are older teenagers. I developed a taste for jasmine tea and there is nothing better to warm me up on a cold day.

We stopped at the Chorsu Bazaar, the largest market in the city. It is always a photographer’s delight to see all of the interesting characters and products for sale. I wanted to buy a rooster but decided not to. A dog is enough to care for…

It was also nice to hold a couple of open gymnasiums for the basketball team. It gives me a chance to develop individual players and my oldest son Owen helped out. It was great to “coach” him again!

I always wonder why the Winter Solstice is not more acknowledged and celebrated in our society. I think it is a big deal because starting today, December 22, the daylight hours get a little longer. There still are 2-3 months of cold weather ahead, but just knowing that the sunrise will a be a little bit earlier and the sunrise a little later, gives me hope that eventually, the long, warm days of summer and outdoor living will come. I see why ancient people celebrated this day and I wonder how long it took them to figure this out.

I always try to spend the day outdoors and at least watch the sunset. Unfortunately, it was overcast. I went jogging in the Navoi National Park and about 2 kilometers into my run, my right calf felt very tight. I had to limp back to my car. I did go for a long bike ride in the late afternoon, but I took Advil, and applied Deep Blue ointment and heat to the calf. It loosened up and this morning it still feels tight but I am not limping as much as I was yesterday. I think 1-2 more days and I’ll be able to run again. I am not sure what is causing it. I read that it may be my running form or just tightness from being old. I did an extensive yoga workout on Tuesday and will again today. Let’s see how it goes and just note that getting older is not pleasant…

My ride was disrupted by the arrival of the Kazakhstan president’s official visit with the Uzbek president. The main roads from the airport to the parliament were closed and I needed to find alternative routes. Uzbekistan is experiencing a natural gas shortage and I assume there will be some agreements to purchase more gas from Kazakhstan. Kazakh flags were posted around the city and welcome messages were on digital billboards all throughout Tashkent.

As you can see in the gallery above, development continues in the city at breakneck speed. Large apartment, office and retail developments are being constructed all over Tashkent.

I have been spending as much time as possible with my family this week and balancing this with work. Yesterday afternoon we rented the VIP Room of the Compass Cinema for a showing of Avatar 2. This is James Cameron’s science fiction sequel to the 2009 release of Avatar. I can’t believe it was 13 years ago that the first one was released. We were told that you couldn’t watch movies in English when we first arrived to Tashkent, but you can call the Compass Cinema, located in the TC Compass mall here in Tashkent, and ask for the movie they are playing not to be dubbed if it is available. They only had the 2-D, Russian sub-title version instead of the 3-D version, but it was still great for the kids. The VIP room seats 26 people and each ticket costs 60,000 UZS ($5.30). All one needs to do is rent the room and then find enough friends interested in joining to cover most of your costs. We easily found 21 people to join in less than 24 hours. I was not in the mood for the movie and took a long nap in the comfortable chairs and then answered emails during the second half of the movie. It was a bit long at 3 hours and 15 minutes. I love doing nice things for my children and I enjoyed the experience by seeing them enjoy the film. Nadia and I thought it was a bit slow.

I held an open gym yesterday for my JV basketball team and 10 players showed up. Owen and his fellow alumnus Nico came and played with the boys. It was great to watch him play again and I was the referee and coached a bit from the side. I discovered to simulate a 7-game series of NBA teams instead of just playing games to a certain score. It resets the game often and the LA Lakers defeated the Golden State Warriors 4-3 so the kids played intensely for almost 2 hours. I had to leave a bit early for a meeting with the construction team and work concerns.

We are on Winter Break until January 9th and our son Owen came in on Friday to complete our family! We are enjoying having us all together. We are staying in Tashkent for the holidays, with my brother and sister-in-law coming to visit us later this week. It is so nice to have flexible working hours and time to relax and recharge after a very busy first half of the school year.

I had a fantastic Sunday. The weather has warmed, although in the shaded areas there are still patches of ice and snow. Owen and I have been hanging out in the mornings because he is jet-lagged and I am up early as usual. I miss him and it fills me with joy to have him around again. I went for a 34-kilometer bicycle ride in the afternoon. I found a safe route along one of the minor canals from my house to the Parkent highway. There is a good sidewalk along the highway. I rode all the way to the Yangi Uzbekistan Park and looped back to the canal through an agricultural area. It was quite muddy on the sides of the road. It felt good to get back into cycling and I am trying to make a point to get as much exercise as possible during the break.

Later in the afternoon, we celebrated the first day of Hanukkah with our good friends the Furman family. We’ve grown quite close over the past two years and Nati and Daphna are special to us. We lit the first candle and sang in Hebrew. Hanukkah celebrates the re-dedication of a temple that was lost to the Syrian Greeks over 2,200 years ago. It is amazing that the Jews can trace back their history as distinct people so long ago. Most Americans can trace their ancestry back to Europe only about a couple of hundred years. My ancestry is Polish/Slovak/Ukraine and the Slavs only go back to approximately 600 AD. I also learned that the Jews have many names for God, including “Adonai”. It means master or lord and is one of the most common terms for god in the Old Testament. We spun the dreidel, I lost twice and won once.

The highlight of the day was watching the extremely exciting World Cup Final between France and Argentina. The constant flopping of Argentinians annoyed me greatly, but eventually, they won me over with their spectacular play. I favor the golden goal to end the game instead of playing the full extra time. However, the late French goal gave us an extra 15 minutes of excitement when it came to penalty kicks. My favorite part was just celebrating goals with Ocean, Nadia and Oliver. We are not big soccer fans, but avidly follow the World Cup and the Summer and Winter Olympics. It was a special night to have the whole family cheering loudly in our living room. We watched the game with our 1-month Peacock subscription. They had the Telemundo feed in Spanish. I first became a true soccer fan in Colombia and I prefer the Latino announcers. Mbappe is a stud and Messi is a magician! Both teams had a great tournament and we loved having a November World Cup this past month.

I also was curious about how much gasoline costs here in Uzbekistan compared to the USA. The mid-grade gasoline (92 octane) costs $3.83 per gallon, which is slightly higher than the $3.26 average price in the USA last week. I used dimensional analysis to convert from 9,500 Uzbek So’um per liter to USD per gallon. Thanks to my high school science teacher Jack Sherman for drilling this into us. It cost me 580,545 Uzbek So’um or $51.53 to fill the 61-liter tank of my Chevrolet Captiva.

I read Christopher Aslan Alexander’s book about his work for an NGO in the city of Khiva, Uzbekistan. Khiva is one of the UNESCO World Heritage-protected cities of the Silk Road. It is the city farthest from Tashkent and it has the largest ancient part of the city (Ichan Kala) that is preserved. I have not been there yet and reading Chris’s account, wants me to see the place. Khiva reached its zenith in the 1600s under the descendants of Ghengis Khan. It was a huge slave market where Persians and Russians were bought and sold. Slave labor built the great walled city.

Chris came and spoke at our school a couple of times and he is a nice guy and a great storyteller. He gave a really good workshop to our Diploma Programme students about what makes a good story. It is nice to have a personal connection to an author. I hope he comes back because now that I read his book, I want to know more from him.

He worked for Operation Mercy, a service organization affiliated with the UN. He developed a carpet factory in a disused madrassa and the book tells the story of the trials and successes in establishing a profitable business. Chris researched ancient texts and paintings to bring back designs of the carpets depicted hundreds of years ago to life. He describes the entire process of how silkworms are raised to collecting plants and powders to make his all natural dyes.

My favorite part of the book was his descriptions of the people he got to know in Khiva. I always wonder while I drive by or visit towns and smaller cities in Uzbekistan about their lives. He gives lots of details of what their lives are like. I forget that poverty really narrows people’s lives and the simple challenge of survival is first and foremost occupation of many of the poor in Uzbekistan. It inspired me to help others more and I will try to support more our service projects that aid the local community. It also gave me an understanding of life under the former president, Islam Karimov.

It has been a cold December in Uzbekistan and like many places in Europe, we are suffering from a shortage of natural gas. This has resulted in lukewarm showers, low flames on stove tops, and people resorting to portable heaters or AC units to heat their homes. Some apartment blocks and homes are affected differently, depending on the home and neighborhood. Luckily, we have warm showers, not hot like before, but enough to feel comfortable. Some of our floors heat as normal and in other rooms, we have no heat at all. On our way to the mountains on Saturday, we noticed long lines of cars waiting for the natural gas stations to open. Many cars in Tashkent converted from gasoline to natural gas because it is cheaper.

Why the shortage of natural gas? I think natural gas is subsidized here and a portion of the natural gas Uzbekistan produces is sold abroad. There has not been enough development of new gas fields in the country. Finally, the country’s economy is growing so fast that supply cannot keep up with demand with more cars on the road, more apartments being built, etc. I see the government has made a deal to purchase more natural gas from Turkmenistan to alleviate the shortages. The unusually low temperatures have not helped the situation and I see that it will warm up a bit over the next week.

The good thing about the cold winter is an early start to the ski season. We had several days of snow last week, one resulting in a rare snow day on Friday. Oliver and I took advantage of the white winter and had an invigorating day of skiing at the Amirsoy Resort. It is relatively inexpensive to ski here. The rental equipment of skis, poles, boots, and helmets for two people costs $28. I reached a milestone and was granted a “pensioner” rate of $18 for a full-day ski pass while my son was charged$26.5o as an adult. That is a pretty good day for $75 for two for a full day of skiing. If you include the $13 parking fee and lunch, it is around a $100 day. I think it is money well spent for a day being outdoors and active with my son!

I am just thankful that as a “pensioner” (age 55+) I can still ski. I was working on leaning forward on my skis and it really did help me control myself. I was able to go on even the steepest and narrowest run (Bravo) without trouble. My favorite run in Tango because it is wide, and long, has a couple of steeper parts and connects back to the mid-point of the gondola. I couldn’t wear the goggles because it was too dark for my eyesight in the shade covered parts of the mountain. Several of the intermediate runs below the mid-point of the gondola were closed. Fortunately, there were not a lot of people at the resort so there were no wait times. The cold weather made for crisp snow and especially in the morning, the snowboarders had not plowed up the snow.

Tashkent received about 6 inches of snow this week and with temperatures remaining below zero, the snow stayed for a few days in the city. More snow is in the forecast tomorrow and for the next 3 days, the temperature will be abnormally cold reaching -9 to =-11. The students love playing in the snow and it really gives the school a Christmas feel.

Uzbekistan is experiencing gas and electricity shortages with no foreseeable quick solutions. I know people that have had power outages and/or low gas. We have electricity in our house but I did notice the gas is low and it results in longer cooking times, warm, not hot showers and a little cooler temperature inside the house because the heated floors are not at full capacity. I feel sorry for the less fortunate.

I’ve had a cold this week so have been trying to take it easy. The other night the family had dinner at Roni Pizzaria. It has a vibrant atmosphere and good food. The countdown is on until Winter Break.

November has come and gone. I can’t believe how fast time is passing. It was an extremely busy month at school for me. We conducted a secondary principal search and hosted 13 evaluation team members as part of our 5-year reaccreditation cycle. These things take a lot of time besides the normal school operations that I have to attend to.

Oliver and Ocean finished their soccer and cross-country running seasons. The new athletic director Walid Berrahal hosted a really nice Fall Sports Awards ceremony. Ocean won the Most Valuable Player Award for the girls, U-15 cross-country running team. Oliver’s soccer team won two championships. I had the honor of opening the ceremony. It was good to see so many students involved in sports at our school and the spirit and sense of belonging this engenders. 

I am pleasantly surprised that Oliver is getting into the World Cup. It is unusual to have it taking place in November and our family usually follows both the World Cup and the Olympics avidly. Every night we try to watch the games and in Tashkent, the time difference means we have had games starting at 3:00 PM and going to 2:00 AM. It was disappointing last night that the USA lost to the Netherlands. They looked small and overwhelmed at times. At least their goal in the 70th minute gave the game some spice before the Netherlands shut the door with their third goal. I enjoy the pageantry and skill of the players but soccer does have a major fault that aggravates me to the point that I have to stop watching. The sport has a serious problem with players falling on purpose to draw a foul. The “flopping” is a farse, with melodramatic flair to make them look ridiculous. I would love to find one team to tell their players never to go to the ground and feign injury and see what effect this has on the other teams and the referees. My solution from a referee’s point of view would be to give an automatic red card and force the player to wear a ballet dancer’s tutu for the next game. I would also change the rules or goal sizes to make goals easier to come by. 

Cold weather has come to Tashkent and we had our first freezing temperatures this school year. Snow is in the forecast for this evening and tomorrow morning! I am looking forward to it and I hope we have a snowy winter. I see there is snow in the mountains which may mean an early opening for the Amirsoy Ski Resort. Hello Winter! Ocean and I found a new Korean Bubble Tea cafe in Tashkent, RounD. Ocean loves bubble tea and on Thursday, we took Obi for a walk to check it out. She rated it highly and we will probably be going back there soon.

During our Fall Break trip to the UAE, we spent two nights in the Dubai exclave of Hatta, a small town of 12,000 people high up in the Hajar (Rocky in English) Mountains. It is an “exclave” because it belongs to the Emirate of Dubai, but it is enclosed by two other Emirates on two sides and on the other two sides by the country of Oman. Hatta was once part of Oman but the ownership was transferred to Dubai in 1850 because the Sultan of Oman at the time, could not defend the region against a rival group in Oman. 

Today it is a vacation destination for expatriates and Emiratis because of the elevation it is less humid and cooler than Dubai. We drove our rental car the 83 miles (134 kilometers) from Dubia to the Ja Hatta Fort Resort. The resort is located just outside of town and was quite nice. We enjoyed the pools and played tennis as well as having some good meals in the restaurant. It was quite relaxing and we could have stayed a few extra days. It reminded me of what I think Palm Springs would be like, a nice town in a desert setting. If I lived in Dubai, I would go out there often.

On the second night, Oliver and I drove through the town and checked out the Hatta Dam, one of the major attractions of the area. They were well set up for kayaking/pedal boating, and as you can see in the video above, I went for a paddle around the reservoir the next morning before we headed back to the airport.

The Dubai government is investing in the town and there were some good roads and parks. The is also a network of hiking trails along creeks and in the canyons but we didn’t have enough time to explore them. Oliver and I did take in the views from a historic fort. Driving through the town, there was not much going on with groups of men sitting in front of storefronts or women sweeping the front sidewalks.